February 2008

You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February 2008.

Email hell

27 February 2008 in Email | 2 comments

A 2008 Workplace Productivity Survey (pdf), commissioned by LexisNexis reports that:

more than seven in ten American white collar workers feel inundated with information at their workplace, while more than two in five feel that they are headed for an information “breaking point.” The survey of 650 white collar and knowledge workers found that employees across virtually every industry are affected by information overload, but that the problem is particularly acute in the legal profession – with almost eight in ten legal professionals saying they are increasingly overloaded with information.

The findings show that a large majority of legal professionals believe that a legal research tool designed for their specific area of practice is important, that this should integrate into workflow, and that it should provides analysis and expertise. Goodness! That’s LexisNexis, isn’t it?

But I’ll just home in on one staggering finding: on average, the legal professionals surveyed say they handle 36.7 incoming work-related emails daily, with 22 per cent reporting that they receive 50 or more in a typical day and 6 per cent saying they receive 100 or more. Now, I know that lawyers are busy people, but shame on you! You don’t need a legal research tool or technology to sort it out; you just need a bit of personal email management.

I claim no expertise whatsoever in this field other than my own personal experience and would be interested in some feedback. So, here’s a test for you:

(1) How many work-related emails do you receive in a day?

(2) Now deduct email in the following categories:

  • Spam. I like to think that spam was not included in the figures, but work-related spam is something that’s likely to get through the spam filters. I don’t have an answer for it, but it doesn’t take long to put it in the trash can.
  • Illegit marketing. Close, but not quite the same as spam. Perpetrators are based abroad or don’t pay heed to the EU marketing directive. Unsubscribe if you can; otherwise deal with as spam.
  • Legit marketing. You bought something from them sometime and forgot to uncheck that box. Unsubscribe.
  • Email alerts/updates. Have you not heard of RSS? Unsubscribe and pop their feed into your reader. What? They don’t provide a feed?
  • cc-itis. I’m guessing that this is a big culprit and something that is endemic in some organisations. How many of your work-related emails are unnecessary copies of emails sent to others, because the sender either lazily replies to all or simply wants to cover their back? Tell them not to do it.

(3) So, if you took the steps above, how many work-related emails would you receive? That’s (1) minus (2).

(Hat tip: Slaw)

Who’s got the offshoring habit?

25 February 2008 in Outsourcing | 6 comments

A partner in a Silver Circle firm comments:

Was noticing that while your site is very detailed in some areas, your discussions, views etc on LPO [legal process outsourcing] are very light. Although you could say that Susskind’s views overlap here? But is this deliberate from you? It seems to be finally moving and I would be interested to hear readers views. I work for a UK based Silver Circle firm although am planning to retire in 12 months and I have noticed the huge shift in the views on LPO from my partner colleagues. Where before it was a “good God no,” we are now looking at “what shall we give them” and “when shall we start.” I am not anti the idea at all and there seem to be some good firms out there, but it almost seems a bit under the radar. The corporates profess to be doing it, but the law firms are if not embarrassed then secretive in a furtive, hiding my drug habit sort of way. Is this your view of it, or is this just in the areas I mix.

So how many firms currently have the outsourcing habit? Are they outsourcing just back office functions, or is there significant legal process outsourcing going on? How much of the work is going offshore where the economies are greatest; how much staying onshore in the UK and Europe? And if there’s so much of it about, why are they being so secretive?

Legal Week recently published an Outsourcing Guide, describing how firms can best go about using legal process outsourcing to their advantage. The article cites a couple of examples of firms shifting substantial work offshore:

Magic Circle giant Clifford Chance has led the field by moving back office and secretarial support to its own office in India, in order to carry out much of the company’s administrative work. The outsourcing programme is expected to yield more than £9.5m in annual savings. Similarly, Pinsent Masons announced a deal to offshore its bulk typing and transcription services as part of a move to change the role of its secretaries.

An undated article in Outsourcing Times describes Clifford Chance’s operation:

In contrast to outsourcing efforts by other Magic Circle firms, Clifford Chances Indian staff are all direct employees of the firm. Its all fairly small,scale compared with what financial institutions have done, [with] 100 people in New Delhi … Two senior members of staff … have relocated to India to manage the office. By keeping the facility part of Clifford Chance, the firm maintains direct control while taking advantage of economies of scale.

The question for Clifford Chance is how much of its business it can transfer overseas. So far it has only moved IT and accounting operations out of London, with New York and Germany next on the list. … Outsourcing specialists … suggest that paralegal work could be handled from a lower cost base offshore; marketing materials or pitch documents could also be prepared from a remote facility.

The article must be somewhat out of date as Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer currently says this about its outsourcing:

Our global outsourcing practice is one of the largest and most experienced in the legal sector and handles a wide range of transactions on both the customer and supplier sides. We have managed some of the most complex and international transactions and our work includes IT and business process outsourcing. We apply our strong M&A execution capability to ensure these transactions are structured effectively and run in the most cost-effective and commercial way.

It’s not all one way traffic. In the comments to the Legal Week article, Richard Bate of Voicepath cites an example of a firm moving work back onshore because of cultural and ethical factors:

Vizards Tweedie selected an offshore outsourced transcription company as its principal supplier but soon found the service had limitations. A spokesperson from Vizards told us: ”While there was a minimal time difference, we found that cultural factors still had an impact on the quality of transcriptions we received. Little things like typists not being able to spell ‘Piccadilly’ proved annoying, especially when we had paid the supplier a premium to give each document a second proofreading. More significantly, we also encountered a certain amount of internal resistance from fee earners, who had ethical reservations about sending work abroad. They felt that such work should be retained in the UK.” Consequently, Vizards began looking into the transcription options available closer to home and now employs our services.

And the Outsourcing Times also refers to the benefits of outsourcing IT closer to home:

Outside the Magic Circle, Eversheds has undertaken one of the most ambitious outsourcing projects, signing a deal last December [year?] with European IT services provider Computacenter plc to outsource a large chunk of its IT operation. … the move [was] largely cost-neutral. Instead, the drivers were access to more sophisticated IT systems and a realization that the IT function could be managed better by a dedicated supplier. … Although Eversheds hasn’t moved anything offshore, [they plan] to visit India later this year to assess various options. There is a hint of inevitability about it.

So that’s just a taste of what’s going on. Updates on these examples and other law firm outsourcing examples would be welcome.

Law prof blogs

23 February 2008 in Blogging, Law blogs

I’ve been meaning for some time to investigate the US law prof blog network as it’s a phenomenon that is not apparent in the UK. Carolyn Elefant on Law Blog Watch has prompted me to do so, pointing to Paul Caron’s study of law prof blog traffic for the period Feb 2007-Jan 2008. Here’s the top 10 from Paul’s 35 – with all blogs and bloggers linked for your convenience.

Rank Blog Blogger Page views Visitors (rank)
1 InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds 75,868,173 70,748,231 (1)
2 Hugh Hewitt Hugh Hewitt 16,604,852 13,392,343 (2)
3 Volokh Conspiracy Sasha Volokh 12,403,944 8,647,368 (3)
4 Althouse Ann Althouse 8,062,853 4,429,672 (4)
5 Patently-O Dennis Crouch 3,015,706 1,532,860 (6)
6 Leiter Reports Brian Leiter 2,706,134 1,629,699 (5)
7 Jack Bog’s Blog Jack Bogdanski 1,974,956 776,272 (12)
8 Balkinization Jack Balkin 1,961,379 1,294,363 (8)
9 TaxProf Blog Paul Caron 1,946,062 1,358,016 (7)
10 Concurring Opinions Daniel Solove 1,751,358 1,125,512 (9)
11 Sentencing Law & Policy Douglas Berman 1,666,960 907,141 (10)

In the comments that follow, numbers in brackets refer to the page view ranks above. Paul Caron writes TaxProf Blog (#9).

The blogs in Paul’s study were “drawn from” Dan Solove’s comprehensive census of law prof blogs on Concurring Opinions (#10) and used the actual traffic statistics of those blogs with publicly available SiteMeters.

Jack Balkin of Balkinization (#8) reviews the results. Although, of course, he has a vested interest, his post and all the comments are well worth reading, giving a good picture of the practice and politics of law prof blogging.

I have a healthy disregard for traffic stats when quoted by individuals: there are so many unsaids, like, for example, do they ever tell you that a substantial proportion of their page views are from automatons – bots like Google that frequently read and index pages or RSS readers that fetch pages several times a day? However, stats comparing like with like and using the same source are always going to be useful.

The stats for the top law prof blogs are impressive – millions of page views (per annum) or even the 6-figures achieved lower down the rankings is a readership to die for. As Jack notes:

Even the least trafficked of these expert blogs probably gain more readers in six months than most law professors could hope for in a career.

But “law prof blogs” are simply blogs written by law professors; they are not necessarily primarily about law. That’s particularly true of the more popular ones, as Brian Leiter of the Leiter Reports (#6) notes:

four of the top five have almost nothing to do with law; four of the top five are right-wing blogs; and three of the top five have almost no intellectual content.

So, if you want a popular blog, don’t write about substantive law!

Ann Althouse (#4) sees an ulterior motive in Paul’s study:

Paul Caron has the top 30, ranked. And you know how we lawprofs love rankings. In the spirit of a US News report that heavily weights LSAT scores, Paul ranks by traffic. In the spirit of a law school that admits more students on LSAT strength, his post will get him more traffic and help him in future rankings.

And I rather liked this comment on Ann’s post about Paul’s pic (judge for yourself):

Every time I see his picture on that blog I find myself wishing he was one half step to the left (his right).

RSS Cruiser

21 February 2008 in Feeds

RSS Cruiser is a legal info buff who currently spends some time on the web looking for law-related RSS feeds, encountering instead (blogs apart) classic Web 1.0 pages that are little use to man or beast in this gimme-what-I-want-now age. These Web 1.0 pages are known as “false documents” in that they look pretty and give him the information he wants but are of little value in the grand Web 2.0 scheme of things. He still awaits rescue with his like-minded castaways.

What RC is after on these pages (since you ask) is little orange icons that look like this.

Turning specifically to law publishers’ new publication feeds (a particular bugbear of his – and he’s not alone) , sadly in a recent trawl he had 100% no shows. (But do note that a number of publishers provide feeds for their journals.)

So, to lighten up his day, he went where he knew he’d find thousands of the little gems – he did a search on Google images for RSS icon. Here’s some of the more interesting variations he found:

Corruption 2.0

21 February 2008 in Democracy

I’ve signed up for the SCL Lecture 2008 in which Prof Larry Lessig will consider “Corruption 2.0 – the destructive effect of money within politics, and the role technology might play in counterbalancing it.”

An unofficial site Draft Lessig was recently set up by a group involved in the Free Culture movement who think that Lessig ought to consider running for the US Congress from the Bay Area. Now what appears to be an “official” site Lessig08 hosts a video to explain the launch of the Change Congress movement and Lessig’s decision whether to run.

Way to go Larry.

Navel gazing

20 February 2008 in Blogging, Society | 1 comment

There’s too much navel gazing by bloggers – blogging about blogging; but, as my business is legal information publishing and blogs are a key part of that now, I think I’m entitled to gaze deep into my navel.

Following my interview with Rob La Gatta at Lexblog, I’ve been thinking more about the questions he posed. Why aren’t there more law bloggers? and why hasn’t law blogging taken off in the UK as much as in the US?

Not surprisingly, LexBlog has come up with some more great insights which go some way to help me answer these questions ex post facto. In a LexBlog Q & A with Greg Storey, LexBlog’s Creative Director and principal at the California-based web design and development corporation Airbag Industries, Greg has this to say about what it takes to run a successful blog:

It is a commitment to run a successful blog. You have to be committed not only to writing your blog, but to keeping up with the conversation that’s happening online within whatever peer group or interest group you want to be a part of. It’s one part writing, one part observing, and one part reading. And you’ve got to have time to do all three of those things. If you do those three things, I think that’s the start of what makes a good blog.

So far, so good. Don’t just write; observe – read – write. But what is the biggest misconception people have when they blog?

If you’re a blog author, you don’t want to write for an audience or expecting an audience. You need to write for yourself. … when I write for Airbag, it’s very rarely that I’m caring about anybody who is reading it. If I can make myself laugh, then I’ve hit the mark. And if I can make myself happy with what I’ve written, then that’s all I care about. Anybody else who comes behind me and thinks what I’ve written is good? That’s just icing on the cake. The thing that people need to remember is, this isn’t your college essay. This isn’t a business memo. This isn’t a sales presentation. This is you, writing as you’re thinking.

And what can blogs do for lawyers?

You may be very intelligent, you may be the best at what you do within a particular legal vertical, but your name is not big enough and there’s no reputation. I think the best way to hone your message and to get out there is to blog about yourself: showing that you are intelligent about this subject, that you do have the tenacity to get things done, that you’ve got the eloquence to represent someone in a way that no one else does. Blogs in the legal world are a way for individuals to come out and say, “Hey, I’m here.” and I think that blogs can go a long way in helping in that effort, in a way that a bus ad or a yellow page ad or a directory listing cannot.

The difficulty in putting one’s finger on what’s good about blogging is that there are two parallel benefits which need to be considered separately – and only the first is a given:

(1) The blogging platform. It’s a simple, cheap, efficient, effective way to publish and update information, particularly in constantly-changing fields such as the law. Blogging puts in your hands publishing “power” even greater than that which was the preserve of only large, established publishers with fat wallets not so long ago. Content management, feed generation, discussion forums, subscriber management, search engine optimisation: all is built in for free. That’s reason enough for almost everyone and every organisation to consider blogging.

(2) The act of blogging. It’s you talking. As Greg says, “This is you, writing as you’re thinking,” not writing for or expecting an audience, but saying “Hey, I’m here.” If you are a stand-up guy/gal and really do have something to contribute, simply by showing who you are, you will engage with your peers and your market; and by showing what you know, you will promote yourself without the need for glossy brochures, calculated networking or other self-promotion that may not sit easily with you. This benefit is not unique to the personal blogger, but there are few group blogs and even fewer corporate blogs that will do the same trick; quite simply they lack personality.

How does this help me answer the questions Rob posed?

Why are there not more law bloggers? The law is not unique here. Why are there not more sportsmen blogging? more entertainers? more accountants? more bankers?

(a) You have to have something to say and want to publish it. 99% of people do have something to say, but don’t judge it worthy of a public airing, or prefer to say it in other ways (on Facebook, down the pub etc). Blogging is journalism; you have to want to do it.

(b) It’s a commitment. 99% of people will commit their time in other ways.

And why hasn’t law blogging taken off in the UK as much as in the US?

This is more difficult to answer. Proportionately, we’re not far behind, but I stand by what I said to Rob. By virtue of the smaller scale of the profession, it’s not yet normal for UK lawyers to blog. We don’t see it or yet engage with it in sufficient numbers, so we don’t do it. For the “internet generation” – shall we say the less-than-30-somethings – exposing oneself on the web is the norm; but for most of those who grew up without it, it’s still an alien world yet to be investigated or to be treated with caution. And all this talk of “social” and “sharing” may still ring familiar bells:

And, you know, there’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours.

(For the benefit of the internet generation, this was Margaret Thatcher in 1987 – 8 years into her term as PM.)

Cool legal info tools

20 February 2008 in Cool tools, Feeds | 1 comment

A roundup of recent legal info tools that have come to my attention but not been blogged yet:

law.librarians is a group blog set up by lo-fi librarian:

A bit of an experiment really. The template for this blog is called Prologue and it lets you (once you are logged in) blog in a Twitter-like fashion. I thought it would be pretty interesting to try it out with other law librarian bloggers. So far it’s a bit of a link blog, sharing resources and news, that sort of thing.

There are already 14 well-known librarians on board as contributors twittering madly. Looks like they’re having fun … and getting some useful work done.

Thanks too to lo-fi for spotting that Wildys now produce RSS feeds for new titles by subject category and also in aggregate.

Blackwell Online also provide feeds of new and forthcoming titles by broad subject including Law.

(Once again, publishers, if you produce your own feeds …)

And yet again thanks to lo-fi for neatly collating info and pretty pics of law and related podcasts.

So, it’s time for a new Podcasts section in infolaw Lawfinder.

IPITevents

18 February 2008 in Intellectual property | 3 comments

Jordan Hatcher has set up IPITevents to “fill a problem” –

how to easily keep track of upcoming intellectual property and information technology conferences, events, and CPDs in the UK. As a busy academic lawyer, I found that while there were a few UK blogs and sites that regularly posted interesting events, I either had to subscribe to lots of irrelevant content to find out about one occasional event, or that I missed out on attending an event because it was posted too close to the event time for me to schedule around it properly. And since I couldn’t find a service I liked enough, I decided to create my own.

So this, the beta version of IPIT Events is the tool I was looking for to keep up with upcoming conferences and events. I hope that you find it useful too.

The Big Switch

8 February 2008 in Business, Society, Technology

More scary stuff.

Just 100 years ago larger businesses generated their own electricity. The subsequent development of the electricity grid, delivering electricity as a commodity, profoundly changed business and society. In the same way, argues Nick Carr in The Big Switch, computer utilities will replace in-house facilities and business and society will be transformed again by the “World Wide Computer”.

The latter part of the book looks at the social and economic consequences of this ubiquitous computing facility and they’re far from utopian. From an extensive review by Andrew Orlowski in the Register:

Carr identifies what [the empty-headed prophets of technology utopianism] have in common quite clearly – and it’s a pseudo-religion: the final chapter is called iGod. He’s excellent at pointing out some of the consequences of technology the utopians ignore, such as the body count. Self-styled “revolutionary” utopians always brush aside the consequences of their advice: the means justify the ends.

The web prophets invariably ignore the sheer hopelessness of today’s internet for sustaining creative business. This is a deep structural problem: because everyone can get hold of anything in this anarchy, there’s none of the scarcity provided by a limited choice of TV channels or movie theatres – and scarcity creates economic incentives for both distributors and creators. Yet for the utopians, some business “model” will pop up and in act of deus ex machina, save the day.

For Carr, correctly, this just isn’t good enough.

For a brief intro watch an interview with Greg Jarboe on YouTube.

Better than free

8 February 2008 in Business

David Tebbutt at IWR neatly summarises a hypothesis from Kevin Kelly that in the digital age anything that can be copied and distributed for free becomes worthless and that therefore value resides only in associated non-copyable attributes.

Kevin categorises these attributes as: immediacy, personalisation, interpretation, authenticity, accessibility, embodiment (a non-digital representation, eg a book or performance), patronage (paying a reasonable amount to the originator) and findability.

Maybe Kevin reads my blog!

« Older entries